Open AccessAutomated smartphone-based system for measuring sperm viability, DNA fragmentation, and hyaluronic binding assay score
Author(s) -
Irene Dimitriadis,
Charles L. Bormann,
Manoj Kumar Kanakasabapathy,
Prudhvi Thirumalaraju,
Hemanth Kandula,
Vinish Yogesh,
Neeraj Gudipati,
V. Natarajan,
John C. Petrozza,
Hadi Shafiee
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0212562
Subject(s) - dna fragmentation , sperm , semen , semen analysis , andrology , male infertility , infertility , sperm motility , biology , unexplained infertility , medicine , genetics , pregnancy , apoptosis , programmed cell death
The fundamental test for male infertility, semen analysis, is mostly a manually performed subjective and time-consuming process and the use of automated systems has been cost prohibitive. We have previously developed an inexpensive smartphone-based system for at-home male infertility screening through automatic and rapid measurement of sperm concentration and motility. Here, we assessed the feasibility of using a similar smartphone-based system for laboratory use in measuring: a) Hyaluronan Binding Assay (HBA) score, a quantitative score describing the sperm maturity and fertilization potential in a semen sample, b) sperm viability, which assesses sperm membrane integrity, and c) sperm DNA fragmentation that assesses the degree of DNA damage. There was good correlation between the manual analysis and smartphone-based analysis for the HBA score when the device was tested with 31 fresh, unprocessed human semen samples. The smartphone-based approach performed with an accuracy of 87% in sperm classification when the HBA score was set at manufacturer’s threshold of 80. Similarly, the sperm viability and DNA fragmentation tests were also shown to be compatible with the smartphone-based system when tested with 102 and 47 human semen samples, respectively.